Month: June 2018

Over the next four weeks we will witness the best players on the planet showcase their skills in pursuit of the ultimate prize any footballer can achieve – to win the World Cup.

As fans of our national teams we like to think that players are giving their all for Queen and country and while the majority of players will see this as the pinnacle of their career to represent their national side in a World Cup, others will see it as an opportunity to put themselves in the biggest possible shop window in order to gain a big money move to the promised land of the Premier League where the pitches are literally paved with gold.

Inevitably we will see a number of the big boys exit at the early stages and whilst excuses will range from arguments in the ranks, refereeing of even Virtual Assistant Refereeing decisions, to bad management or even noisy hotels! I’m pretty confident that the consistent excuse that we hear at every major tournament will appear at some stage – “the players were simply too tired.”

Whatever your thoughts on Premier League footballers, (or players from any other league in the world for that matter), the morality of their wage packets, their level of intelligence or the annoyance of their “WAGS”, you can’t get away from the fact that the world simply loves the beautiful game. Fans want to see more and more league, cup, international and even friendly games played each season, surely this takes its toll on the players required to perform at the highest level in each fixture?

But what is the reality of the situation? Is tiredness a justified excuse? Are we asking too much of players these days and how do we look after them in the best possible way? Here’s my take on things from a human performance perspective…

Dealing with injuries

The fact is that of the 23 members of each nations playing squad, every single player will have had some form of injury of varying degrees, during this past season. Whilst those players would have received incredible care from the best team doctors and sports science support team at their clubs, ultimately the decision to return would be on the player and although all top players can still perform at 80 or 90% of their capacity, consistently asking their bodies to deliver when they are not 100% fit will inevitably lead to long-term issues.

You hear stories of the old school centre halves that would take pain killing injections at half time to get them through the next 45 minutes or just man up and get on with it! But we take a more sensible approach to sports medicine these days and look after the welfare of the players first and foremost, meaning that these type of things simply can’t go on nowadays.

Life moves on and football has moved on at a rapid rate. The evolution of sports science and the evolution of the game itself has drastically changed even in the last few years. The role of the full-back has drastically changed from the guy that just needed to hoof it up the touch line, into a much more skilful attacking player that arguably runs the game from an attacking and defensive perspective. These guys require the upper body strength to hold off other opposing players, the cardiovascular fitness to run over 10km each game, the speed to sprint up and down the touchline and the skill to take on defenders and deliver pinpoint crosses.

But even these highly conditioned athletes will have their weaknesses, typically most players are very one sided which will immediately causes potential imbalances and weaknesses. Coaches and sports scientists are very aware of what they term “functional dysfunction” they just need to address to these imbalances in a structured manner before they potentially lead to injury.

Technology

The fact is we now have the technology to monitor top athletes in so many ways around the clock, we can see how much they’ve moved, how hard they’ve trained, the quality and quantity of the recovery and sleep they’ve had, we are aware of their personality type and how they need to be managed. We know their stress levels and how they manage it (or don’t). We can monitor how they walk, talk, eat, sleep and breathe, and we have the ability to control so many aspects of their human performance.

Dave Brailsford the former performance director of British Cycling termed this approach “marginal gains” and the advancement in sports science over the last ten years or so has meant that these marginal gains within any sport have enabled a huge impact on the overall analysis and performance of each individual and team.

But, and it’s a very big BUT, we need to realise that these are young men and not machines and sometimes things don’t quite go to plan!

How well do you think you would perform with a relatively simple task in your day to day work life if you had over a billion people watching you doing it?!

Fail To Succeed

How you deal with pressure and how you respond when things go wrong is, in my opinion what defines you as a potential £100 million pound athlete.

Every single player that has been selected to represent their country in Russia this summer is the best player in their position at their club, they were the best player in the youth team they graduated from and they were head and shoulders above every other kid in the playground at school. When it comes to football, all these player have ever known is how to deal with success!

The average player falls away, but the star performer just gets better.

When David Beckham was sent off for England in France ’98 some thought his England career was over. Instead it ended up being the making of him, the following year he won everything with Manchester United and single handily dragged England through to the 2002 World Cup and in the process became a phenomenal captain and leader.

Nutrition isn’t just about having six pack abs. Good Nutrition will give you a positive outlook, it will turbo charge your energy levels, it will improve your alertness and productivity and can even speed up your recovery from injury. Gone are the days when a typical player’s diet would consist of a pre-match fry up followed by some post-match beers! I’m sure a number of players out there still do this from time to time, but I guarantee they’ll never become a £100 million pound athlete with a Sunday League players diet. If you’re after marginal gains then first stop is the fuel you are putting in your engine.

Recovery is the toughest one to manage. Every player just wants to play and the biggest mistake many of them make is rushing back before they are fully recovered. Top players have amazing coaches, therapists and doctors at their beck and call to safely manage their return from injury. Everything from physiotherapy to cryotherapy, soft tissue work to fitness testing is covered. The problem isn’t when they are at their clubs, the issue is what do they do when they are at home?

A £100 million pound athlete will do everything required to get them back to their best. They will have their own recovery routine, wrap themselves in cotton wool and prioritise a good night’s sleep over a big night out every time.

For high performance I cannot emphasise the importance of sleep enough. It’s no coincidence that Roger Federer and LeBron James who are arguably performing better than ever in twilight of their respective careers swear by 12 hours sleep each night. It doesn’t sell newspapers hearing a footballer is tucked up in bed at 9pm, but it definitely ensures that the player makes headlines on the back pages and not the front pages!

Mind set – This is without doubt the key ingredient to building a £100 million pound athlete.

Throughout their career players will be faced with any number of challenges, from injury, humiliating defeat, falling out of favour with the manager, to transferring to a new country and managing personal issues. Problems will always arise and the bigger the problem, the bigger the potential reward. The truth is in football and in life it's never about the problem, it just comes down to how you deal with it. An average player will just see the problem and it will always hinder their progress, the top player will simply see each problem as another small hurdle along their journey to becoming a superstar!

Get all four of these ingredients in place in a manner that works for that individual player and success is guaranteed.

**Food for thought, at the last World Cup in Brazil, then 22 year old Mario Goetze famously scored the winning goal that saw Germany lift the trophy. Four years later and arguably at what should be the peak of his career Goetze didn’t make the squad for this years tournament. We all want to see the star players perform and I'm sure the winning goalscorer will again be the lasting memory of this tournament in four weeks time. But just keep an eye on the spectacular failures, it may just be the making of a new £100million athlete!

If you consider yourself to be a runner then you’re likely out most days come rain or shine. You put the miles in each week, you push yourself on the days that you really don’t feel like doing anything and you pride yourself on training hard each and every week.

But are you actually getting any faster? If not, I’d like to shed some light on why this may be the case and what you can do in order to change this.

Before we start, I would like to make it clear to anyone reading this who isn’t solely looking to develop their performance, to not be offended by what I write below. There are a huge number of people that run each week purely for the sheer enjoyment of running. Maybe it’s a new hobby that you’ve taken up or a way to meet new people, maybe you’re providing moral support to a friend or you might just need an excuse to get out of work or away from home for an hour! Whatever your reason, please keep doing what you’re doing. Joining a running club or a park run is such an enjoyable thing to do, it’s a great way of meeting people and the therapy that running provides is essential for so many people to help them get through their week. Who am I to challenge that?!

This article is for those of you that have genuine intentions of gaining personal bests, but for some reason feel like you’re going backwards instead of progressing. If this is the case then let’s dig into the reasons why this may be happening…

Ask most runners what their weekly schedule looks like and you tend to get a similar response; they will usually train five or six times per week and their training will be split into either the long runs, the steady runs or the interval runs. On the surface this seems like the perfect combination, but the truth may be far from perfect.

You see, although virtually all of these runners will have a fancy heart rate monitor and watch on their wrist, the majority will not really know what to do with them. When you don’t know how hard you should be training or always run in a group and go at someone else’s pace, you’ll often find that you go too hard on the easier runs and too easy on the harder runs. As a result, you end up in no man’s land completing hours and hours of miles that actually impact very little on your overall level of fitness. Do you know about heart rate variability? Are you aware of your true maximum heart rate?

Doing the same thing each week isn’t training. Training is about pushing beyond your previous best, getting outside of your comfort zone and challenging your body – not running 6 miles simply because it’s a Wednesday and that’s what everyone else does.

I also typically see a mentality from most runners that anything other than running is considered a waste of their time. Why waste 45 minutes in the gym when they could get in a steady 10k instead? This is a battle that I constantly face.

If you want to make improvements, you need to be prepared to do the hard work. Your speed would develop if you got stronger, your knee pain would likely disappear if you developed glutes, the back pain that you experience after 90 minutes would likely go away with some core strength..the list goes on. If your goal is to get faster this year then continue reading.

If you’re still with me, let’s look at some simple fixes that I guarantee will see your PB times improve significantly.

Lack of Sleep

To be clear, the actual training doesn’t make you faster. It is the recovery or super-compensation that you give to your body that allows it to make the adaptations in order for you to improve. Running will place stress on your body and unless you recover properly from that stress, you’ll end up making things worse rather than better.

Many runners use the term ‘over-training’. I don’t personally believe in this concept since the whole point of training is for it to be tough and to push you beyond your previous capabilities. It isn’t that you over-train, you simply under-recover! So if you’re looking to get faster, consider going to bed earlier.

Poor diet

The fuel that you put into your engine will ultimately determine the performance. You wouldn’t dream of going on a long car journey without filling up with fuel and checking your oil and water, but would you train for a marathon on cereal bars and coffee?!

In my experience, most runners will either under-eat because they don’t believe they should eat anything before a ten mile run, or overeat because they feel they should reward their efforts with cake! The important thing is to learn to have a good relationship with food. High performance starts with good nutrition – you simply can’t expect your body to deliver if you aren’t consuming good quality protein, fats and carbohydrates. Eat real food first and then seek supplements later. Remember to keep hydrated, since dehydration can have a significant impact on your physical and mental performance.

Is your training appropriate?

First and foremost, decide what you’re actually training for. I meet so many runners who run without any real purpose. They enter the odd 10k or half marathon events but generally they just run for the sake of running. Pick your event and make that your focus.

If you are training for a 10k then is a weekend long run really appropriate? The infamous long weekend run is the staple of most runners training regime, but is it more appropriate to perform a high intensity interval session?

Listen to your body

Injuries go hand in hand with most runners. It’s inevitable that you’ll suffer at some point, however so many injuries can easily be avoided. Achilles tendon issues, plantar fasciitis or shin splints are massive red flags that your running style is off or that you’re wearing trainers that either aren’t appropriate for your feet or are simply in need of replacing.

Back and neck pain are usually indications of poor posture, hip discomfort is often related to being sat down for long periods, general aches and pains are due to a lack of mobility and all of these things can be improved in the gym. Learn how to lift, how to foam roll, how to improve core strength and how to improve mobility and see all of these issues disappear. Whilst you have likely caused most of these issues yourself, you also have the power to correct them. Your body is constantly talking to you and starting to listen to it a bit more is key.

The mantra of Eat, Sleep, Train, Repeat is one that we all know but very few of us follow properly…

Eat – Eat like a king, Eat often, Eat real food and Eat like you’re fuelling a high performance engine – because you are!